Mikau: Hi guys. The election and its aftermath (along with the onset of winter) have left me majorly depressed, so I have no will to write and am back to thinking everything I do manage to create is rubbish. -.- That being said, I hope you enjoy this fluffy RanKai piece because it's probably not as bad as I think it is. Thanks so much for reading.
Disclaimer: If I owned it, there would be major shifts in what couples were canon. Healthier relationships for all!
…
Code
Ran stared down at the indecipherable jumble of letters and numbers on the sheet in front of her. She blinked, tilted her head to one side, squinted, and then tipped her head the opposite direction.
The words—if they even were words—on the page still remained as meaningless as Latin to her.
Across the table in the university library, Kaito squirmed, simultaneously wishing she'd understand already while also absolutely dreading the moment she cracked the code.
She looked up at him and frowned. "Is this some kind of heist note? I thought you were done with all that."
Kaito swallowed nervously. "No. I am done. I just still like word games and puzzles and all that, so…"
"…So you want me to play with you by solving this?" Ran gave Kaito a quizzical look. "Wouldn't it be better if you asked Hakuba-kun or…" She stumbled over the word. "…or Kudo-kun?"
The excited butterflies in Kaito's stomach turned to sour milk as it dawned on him that maybe he had misunderstood her words and actions. Maybe he'd allowed himself to hope all for nothing.
Kaito looked away, cheeks glowing slightly more pink than usual as he held out his hand. "I'm sorry. It was a stupid idea, and I shouldn't have asked. Give it back."
Ran pulled the piece of paper to her chest to reduce the likelihood of him grabbing it and taking it forcibly. "No. You gave it to me for a reason, didn't you? You wanted me in particular to solve it, so I will."
"Ran, it was a mistake," Kaito insisted, reluctantly facing her as he motioned with his hand again. "Please give it back. I don't know what I was thinking when I got it in my head to write that."
He knew exactly what he had been thinking. He'd been thinking he had a chance. Only now he was beginning to fear he was delusional. Better to take it all back, pretend it had never happened, and keep things exactly the way they were. If keeping her friendship meant burying his own feelings, so be it.
"But you did write it for me, for me especially?" she demanded to know.
"…Yes," he mumbled, lowering his eyes.
"How long did it take you?" The inquisition continued.
He shrugged. "A week or so. All together, probably three or four hours getting the wording right and then coding it."
"Then the least I can do is try for a week to figure it out," she decreed as if this were a logical leap anyone might make.
"And then you'll give it back if you can't solve it?" Kaito held his breath.
This had been a stupid, stupid, stupid idea, and he was regretting it immensely. What had he been thinking? Best case scenario: she felt sorry for him and kept treating him as a friend out of pity. Worst case scenario: she laughed him out of town. He'd been a fool.
Ran pursed her lips. She didn't like considering defeat, but… "Deal. But I fully expect to crack it way before then, so don't keep your hopes up on getting this back."
With a triumphant grin, Ran stood, gathered her books, and walked tall and proud out of the library.
Once she was out of sight, Kaito began to softly hit his head against the table, all the while fervently praying she remained stumped and they'd be able to weather this. If not…he had no one to blame but himself and his romantic delusions.
…
Ran struggled with the code for two full days before she realized that she was in over her head. She'd failed to consider that she was dealing with a professional whose riddles had baffled the police and sometimes even…even Shinichi. Ran gave it her best try, though, moving the numbers and letters around, transposing the numbers into letters and the letters into numbers, but so far nothing had come of it.
It was at this point she admitted defeat and accepted that she was going to need help to solve one of KID's riddles.
Unfortunately, "I'm sorry, Ran-san, but I can't help you" was Hakuba's reply when she came to him on the third day.
She frowned and growled, "Why not?" at the Brit.
Saguru seemed to shrink slightly, but he held his ground. "Because you have to do this yourself. I promised Kuroba that I wouldn't say a word about it."
Ran grumbled under her breath, knowing that there was no way to cajole, threaten, or bribe Hakuba out of his allegiance to Kaito. She knew from experience that the blonde was a strict man of his word.
"Tell me this at least," she begged, holding out the now much rumpled sheet of paper. "Can you read it? You don't have to tell me what it says, but can you read it?"
Saguru took the paper and squinted over it for a good minute. Then he handed it back, shaking his head. "This wasn't written for me, so I don't have the key to unlocking its secrets. Now that's all the hint you're going to get, Ran-san, so I wish you good luck."
Ran went away muttering, "What kind of hint was that?"
…
The sixth day came and went, and still Ran hadn't made any progress on Kaito's note. At this point, she was getting desperate and almost considering the unthinkable. She'd tried the Tanteidan, the Professor, even the detectives at the station, but she'd yet to receive any helpful advice or clues.
On day seven, she screwed up her courage and did something she'd never thought she'd be able to do again: go to the Kudo Manor.
Shinichi opened the door, and they stared at one another uncomfortably for nearly a full minute before Ran spoke.
"S-Sorry. I was just in the neighborhood, and I…" She swallowed her pride, and, looking down at her feet, held out Kaito's note. "I need your help deciphering this. Will you help me please?"
Shinichi took the sheet and looked it over. He spent less than a minute on it, and then he glanced up at Ran. "Where did you get this?"
"Kaito…-kun," she corrected herself too late and only wound up sounding awkward.
Shinichi nodded.
"Can you read it?" Ran held her breath. If there were anyone who could assist her, it was Shinichi.
But Shinichi shook his head, and Ran's heart sank.
"I don't have the key." He shrugged.
Ran's ears perked up. "Key?" Hakuba-kun had used the same word. "What key?"
"The key," Shinichi stressed. "To break this kind of code, you need the book the writer used as a key. Well, it doesn't have to be strictly a book, though it typically is. You could use a song, a poem, a political pamphlet…something with lots of words in it." He pointed at the paper and explained, "This first number is the page number, second is the line, and third is the word. I see a few that have a fourth number, and that's probably the letter within that word. The extra letters scattered throughout are probably in there because he couldn't find the right form of the word he wanted or it wasn't in the book he was using for a key."
"You think it was a book that he used?" Ran inquired, determined to pump her ex for what he was worth so long as she was there.
Shinichi shrugged disinterestedly again, pointing at the first number in the first grouping. "Look at the page numbers. They go up to one hundred but rarely exceed one hundred. That's too long for most other forms of literature or media but not too terribly long by book standards. My guess is that you're looking for a novella-length book. Has he given you any books lately?" he inquired, handing back the sheet.
Ran bit her lip and tried to think.
"Have you discussed any books with him recently? Has he suggested you read anything? Are there any books you strongly identify with him for some reason?" Shinichi tried to be helpful despite the leftover bitterness from their breakup.
There was Oe Kenzaburo's The Changeling, Flowers for Algernon, Anne Bronte, and The Great Gatsby, but those were all too long to be the tome in question. Suddenly it came to her.
"The Little Prince," she breathed. She hurriedly looked down at her watch—only an hour until the library closed. "Sorry. I have to go."
Ran turned and started to dash off, desperate to make it there and get the book she needed before she missed the deadline. She'd made it halfway down the drive before it occurred to her to stop and turn back around.
She bowed low and then looked Shinichi in the eye. "Thank you so much for your help…K-Kudo-kun."
Shinichi's hitherto indifferent expression finally melted into a sad, reluctantly fond smile. "Don't worry about it, Ran," he stressed, throwing her a lifeline, even though they both knew things could never be truly "okay" between them again. "Good luck solving the riddle." He turned and waved to her over his shoulder as he headed back inside.
…
Ran got to the library with twenty-five minutes to spare before closing, and an hour and a half before she was supposed to meet with Kaito to declare either victory or defeat. She frantically flipped through the pages of The Little Prince, hurriedly scrawling the words on a scrap piece of paper as she found them.
She had to stop a few times and double check. Twice she made a mistake and had to erase a few words and try again. There were a couple of times she had to pause and stare at the message unfolding before her. Hands trembling, she went back to work, anxious to read the next word, the next line, desperate to make sense of it all.
When she'd finished, she gaped at the page, reading it over and over, wondering if it were truly real. Her palms were sweaty, and she couldn't seem to get air in her lungs. Her heart was beating so fast it hurt. She gulped and read once more:
"To the girl whose eyes shimmer like stars and whose laughter rings like the peals of thousands of tiny bells. From a man who was lost. You saved me when I was wondering in the desert. You taught me to smile again. You've tamed me, Ran, and become my sun, my guide. Now that I've met you and know what it feels like to be with you who accepts me, broken mess that I am, I don't ever want to be without you. I love you. Will you be mine?"
…
Kaito was sitting in the corner booth of the campus café, staring intently out the window as he twirled a pencil furiously round and round his fingers.
She'd come in the back door whereas Kaito was obviously keeping watch for her at the front, so he didn't see her right away. This offered Ran a rare glimpse at her friend unguarded.
Kaito looked tired and irritated. Now that she stopped to think about it, Kaito had seemed jumpy and tense all week.
"And no wonder," she thought. "Waiting on edge a full week for an answer to your confession…to a confession like that."
Especially after how badly he'd broken when his first love Aoko had rejected him, ejecting him from her life.
"Poor Kaito," Ran breathed, slowly advancing.
He was so focused on the front door, he didn't hear her approach. He jumped when she called his name, and the pencil he had been slinging around flew out of his hand, hurtling into the wall before clattering down onto the table.
"S-Sorry." Ran took an involuntary step back, startled at just how much she had startled him. "I didn't mean to—"
"—It's fine," Kaito assured, visibly putting on his poker face as he stood and motioned for her to sit with a polite bow. "I'm fine."
He smiled, but his heart wasn't in it.
Ran chose not to comment, instead reaching into her bag and pulling out the thrice-folded note.
"So do you admit defeat?" Kaito tried to goad, but his tone was hollow and brittle, like he was just on the verge of emotional collapse.
Ran's eyebrows pinched together as she unfolded the sheet of paper, smoothing the creases. "Actually, I solved it."
Kaito's mask crumbled, leaving his face looking pale and terrified. "What? R-Really?"
She nodded, pushing the message, now with accompanying translation at the bottom, across to him. "Is that right?" she managed to inquire levelly, even though her heart was pitter-pattering like a frightened rabbit's.
Kaito gulped as he picked up the note and read his own words in her tidy, elegant characters. It all sounded so stupid and pathetic now. What must she think of him?
"Yeah," Kaito sighed, raking a hand through his hair slowly as he blew out the breath. "Yeah, that's right."
"Oh," Ran responded eloquently as her heart trilled in her chest, leaving her dizzy. She felt overheated. Her hearing was going in and out. Had he actually said yes?
Kaito set down the paper, closing his eyes and lowering his head as his cheeks burned in shame.
"I'm sorry. I don't know what got into me," he tried to explain, hoping he could mitigate the harm he'd done to their friendship. "I shouldn't have written that. I know you're still not over Kudo and that you said you wanted a break from relationships for a few years, but I thought that since…"
He checked himself, mentally scolding himself for trying to plead his case. He'd probably freaked her out with that intense, obsessed stalker message. What he needed to do here was damage control, not make it worse with entreaties trying to change her mind.
He tried again. "What I mean is…I'm sorry I got the wrong idea. The other week when you told me that you thought it was fate that the two of us had met, I started thinking that maybe that meant you felt something for me too, so I wrote the note, and it wasn't until after I gave it to you that I realized I had been wrong, so I'm sorry I jumped to conclusions like that." He hurriedly spit it all out before she could interrupt him and kick him out of her life forever. He couldn't lose her too. "I take it back, so let's just forget this ever happened, and we can just—"
"—Kaito!" Ran finally cut through the tidal wave of panic he'd been dumping onto her. "Stop," she commanded.
He gulped, hesitantly looking up at her, daring to hope he'd find mercy in her expression instead of the scorn that he feared to see there.
She reached across the table and took his hand in her own. "Kaito, you didn't get the wrong idea," she stressed.
He blinked owlishly at her, wondering if he'd fallen asleep at some point. Perhaps he was in a coma, inventing all of this somewhere inside the confines of his own mind.
"I do have feelings for you," she clarified when he didn't seem to understand. She waited a beat for him to respond, but when he continued to stare at her, stunned, she added, "Kaito, I like you too."
"Oh," was all that Kaito could manage at that point. It took a minute for his brain to come back online. "Wait. Really? You really do?"
"Of course I do, silly," she laughed, partway between amused and exasperated. "Why would I say that if I didn't?"
Kaito looked away and muttered, "Because you feel sorry for me and you're lonely too and…I look like him."
Ran's eyes widened as her lips rounded into an "oh" of realization. "Kaito, no," she breathed, squeezing his hand gently. "It's not like that at all."
"Not even a little bit?" He forced himself to face her, to look her in the eyes and confront head on whatever truth he found there.
She smiled lovingly. "Not even a little bit. I like you for you, Kaito. You made me change my mind about getting into a relationship again all on your own merits. This has nothing to do with Shinichi or rebounding or pity or desperation or loneliness or anything like that, okay?" she assured.
He gazed at her intently for a long moment, studying the honest affection in her eyes and trying to find fault with it. There was no deceit there.
Kaito grinned with a laugh that inclined toward the hysteric side. "Okay," he chuckled, nodding and squeezing her hand in return. "Okay. So…you'll go out with me?"
"Yes, Kaito," she laughed, and her face started to hurt she was smiling so hard. It had been a long time since she had been that happy. "Now where are you going to take me for our first date?"
Kaito sat up a little straighter, interlacing his fingers with hers and beginning to rub gentle circles on the inside of her palm with his thumb. "Well," he purred. "There are several options."
Ran raised an eyebrow, intrigued. "Options?"
Kaito nodded. "There's the daytrip to Yokohama, the boutique shopping date with lunch at the little Parisian café, the hiking in the mountains daytrip, the movie at my house date where I make you dinner, the Ueno Park and Zoo date, the cherry blossom viewing triple date with Hakuba and Sera and Sono-chan and her beau, the shrine festival date where I get to see you in a yukata, the stargazing date where we lay on a blanket out in my backyard and snuggle for warmth, the weekend onsen trip that we don't exactly tell the truth to your father about—"
Here Kaito caught himself and, turning crimson, hurriedly explained, "—but that one's not until later on in the relationship! I didn't mean—!"
But Ran was too busy chuckling in amusement at how cute her new boyfriend was when he was in earnest. "Don't worry, Kaito. That sounds wonderful. It all sounds wonderful. And it seems like you've really thought this out, haven't you?"
Kaito smiled sadly, taking her other hand in his own. "I've been daydreaming about dates with you for months now. There's even an aquarium date where you hold my hand the whole time and I use my petrifying fear as an excuse to stick to you like a burr," he admitted sheepishly. "It's kind of pathetic, isn't it? That I'm that far gone on you?"
Ran gently smiled, leaning in and pressing a whisper of a kiss to Kaito's cheek. "It's sweet," she corrected. "It shows you're thoughtful, going to the trouble of planning so many outings with me in such detail. It's what I need—someone who thinks of my needs and puts me first this time. I'm so tired of playing second fiddle to some case." Ran shook her head, sighing. "I get it. I really do understand how important it is to ensure justice is done, but…is it so wrong for me to want to be the most important to the person who's most important to me?"
"Not at all," Kaito whispered, lifting one of her hands and nuzzling it. "And I think I can take care of that for you. In fact," he chuckled. "I'm pretty sure I'm going to make you sick of my undying devotion before too long." He was only partially joking. He knew he could be a little intense at times.
Ran shook her head. "You'll simmer down after a while. You'll start to see that I'm human and flawed, and you'll eventually regain that calm, sexy levelheadedness that you had when I first met you. Just like how I'll slowly become less needy and less domineering. We'll even out with time as we gradually become a healthy couple."
"You think we can?" Kaito's brow creased in doubt. "I've only ever known dysfunction since I was a kid."
"Me too," Ran sighed, but she strengthened her grip on his hands. "So we'll just have to figure it out together. Okay?"
Kaito smiled, leaning in and placing an adoring kiss on her forehead. "Okay. So long as we're together."
The
End